Why does a can of Green Giant sliced mush­rooms state that it’s from Indone­sia and yet a sim­i­lar size can of Del Monte beets doesn’t state the coun­try of origin? 

But then nei­ther does the super­mar­ket brand of beets! 

Should I real­ly be check­ing up on the coun­try of ori­gin of major ‘trusted’ US brands of canned food?

Why aren’t ALL food prod­ucts, frozen, canned or ‘fresh’ labeled with their coun­try of origin?

I am rapid­ly los­ing faith in many nation­al brands and that just caus­es me to def­i­nite­ly query the trust I should have in the house brands too, even from rep­utable super­mar­ket chains.

‘Brand’ doesn’t mat­ter much any more – most of them aren’t being hon­est with us, even if they’re tech­ni­cal­ly obey­ing the law – they just can’t be trusted.

Did any­one notice that Ivory Snow laun­dry deter­gent has dis­ap­peared off super­mar­ket shelves? Am I the last per­son in this coun­try using it? When I came to this coun­try I didn’t have some­one to tell me which laun­dry soaps to use, I just devel­oped my ‘trust’ by tri­al and error. 

Ivory Snow has been the mildest deter­gent to use (by rep­u­ta­tion and in use) over the years and pro­duced no irri­ta­tion on the skin of infants, chil­dren and even a dis­abled spouse heal­ing from bed­sores caused by being bed bound for sev­er­al months. 

An email query to Proc­tor & Gam­ble (the man­u­fac­tur­er of Ivory Snow) just advised us to ask our local super­mar­ket to order it, which they don’t appear to be able to do. 

So here’s my suspicion: 

Proc­tor and Gam­ble also owns the Tide brand – they have many vari­eties of ‘Tide’ now. I sus­pect that the one that’s labeled ‘sensitive’ is going to end up being the ‘new’ (and improved?) ‘Ivory Snow’ only under the ‘Tide’ brand.

All these changes cause prob­lems for the con­sumer – with­out the knowl­edge of the consumer. 

It’s hap­pened, to my knowl­edge, with Arnold bread, which used to have August Broth­ers as its brand name, and with Spice Island spices. 

In the case of bread and soap pow­der there could be dietary or health repercussions. 

In the case of spices the flavour of the meals I pre­pared didn’t taste the same and I couldn’t work out why until I realised that although the spices had the same prod­uct name the bal­ance of ingre­di­ents, and thus the flavour, had been changed by Spice Islands. Prod­uct names then got switched around and the one I’d favoured was dropped from the prod­uct lineup. 

After much ado it seems Spice Islands has set­tled on a prod­uct name and the flavours seem sim­i­lar to those I’ve used in the past! 

This is exhaust­ing, and expen­sive, research!! 

I for­got to men­tion – Almay Oil Free Eye Make­up Remover. That’s been “new” for about a year or more and now it stings my eyes.

Which com­pa­nies do you trust? Are they even both­er­ing to respond to your queries? Do you even both­er to write to them?

Are you think­ing yet? 

Doesn’t it all stink?